How to create joyful customer journeys that power your business

Welcome to the third episode of the LionHearted Marketing Podcast!

What’s this episode about?

Ready to uncover the secrets of creating joyful, repeatable customer journeys that consistently convert new clients? Well, you're in for a treat!

In this week's episode, we're diving deep into the power of customer journeys and the practical strategies you can implement to take your marketing, and business, to the next level.

In this episode we cover:

🔎 Gain Clarity: Discover how to analyze your existing marketing and identify the gaps and missed opportunities in your customer journey.

🚀 Small Changes, Big Impact: Learn how making relatively small adjustments can have a significant long-term effect on your business growth.

💡 Flip the Funnel: Explore a fresh perspective on your marketing funnel and see how viewing it as a customer journey can revolutionize your approach.

💌 The Art of Connection: Understand the importance of nurturing your leads and building meaningful connections at every step of the customer journey.

📈 Predictability & Reliability: Find out how data, automations, and Facebook ads can make your customer journey more predictable, enjoyable, and ultimately, more successful.

If you enjoyed the podcast, here are some ways you can be a part of my world:

Social:

Love Instagram? Click here to watch a video I made on the Warm audience trap (hint, it's something almost every client struggles with!)More of a LinkedIn fan? I'm there too! Come and follow me here: Sophie Griffiths

Free Resource:

Ready to grow an audience of people who WANT you to sell to them? Radical idea I know, but it shouldn’t be! Click here to get access to my step by step guide to using simple, effective ads to build & nurture a community of superfans,

Work together:

Ready to build an audience of superfans who are excited and ready to buy from you?
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Got questions?

DM me on Insta or LinkedIn
Email me here: hello@sophiegriffiths.co

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Read the transcript:

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. S2 E2 === [00:00:00] hello, and welcome to Lion Hearted Marketing. This is a podcast for bold businesses who are ready to go from a slightly scattergun marketing approach to connecting everything they're doing to create joyful, repeatable customer journeys, that build connection and consistently convert new clients. That's called a funnel. If you fancy. If you have that nagging feeling, you should have more of a grasp on your marketing, more of a plan, more of a system to support your pretty successful business. You're in the right place. This isn't about trying lows and new strategies. It's about taking what you've got and making the most of it. I'm Sophie your host. Self-confessed tea superfan marketing strategist and funnels or joyful journeys, as I like to call them, demystifier. Join me every Tuesday for my Lion hearted approach to marketing. To help you navigate those big moves, stay focused on your goals and ultimately take your business to the next level. Let's jump in to today's episode. Hello and welcome to this week's episode. [00:01:00] So this week is gonna be a little bit more of a practical episode for you to really start, get you thinking about your own marketing, what you've already got in place, and how you can make some relatively small changes and have quite big long-term impact. Now, before I jump in, I just want to share what I've seen working with clients over the last few years and how I've kind of got to this method or strategy that I'm gonna share with you. . So for quite a long time, if you got it right, you could rely on one platform to bring you new people, help them get to know you and turn them into clients. Whether it was relying on ads Instagram, Facebook groups, lots of people did the single focus strategy really well, and for a lot of reasons it worked well. You didn't have to split your time, your focus, you could really go all in on one thing. However, for all sorts of reasons, covid changes to ads, changes to Facebook, Instagram, algorithms, introduction of reels, you know, all the stuff I'm talking about. More and more. It's been much harder for my clients and me as [00:02:00] well, like doing my own marketing to make one platform. Work reliably for you. And that's the problem really is the reliability. Sometimes it works really well, sometimes it just stops working and you're just not really sure why and that can feel really frustrating. Now, in the last year or so, most of the clients I've worked with, you know specifically on growing their email list, they don't rely on one thing. They're using Facebook ads. Obviously with me they have social media, they have an email list cuz that's what we're growing. so they're not just focusing one thing. They've moved on to kind of using social and email and ads and sometimes other things as well. Podcasts, YouTube channels and that sort of thing. But what I started to notice was quite a big difference between clients where we were growing their email list and they were getting incredible clients from it. You know, seeing an ad, booking a call, and becoming a client for thousands of pounds within a week. Other clients where they were really, really struggling, their email list was growing. The ads were working really well. They seemed like they were ideal clients. You know, we were really nailing the lead magnet. We did loads and loads of work and getting the right [00:03:00] people on the list, but they just really struggled to convert them. And what I really started to notice was the ones that were killing it and doing so well, they saw the end-to-end journey for the client. They really understood that once someone came into their world, like on their email list, that wasn't the end of the job. It wasn't a case of them just sending, sending some emails, doing a few social media posts. And hoping they kind of came out the other side. They really saw this journey that the client was coming into as a bigger picture piece. Like they kind of saw the end-to-end thing. The ones that were really struggling had all the same things in place. They had email marketing, they had social media, but the way they were looking at it was much more from a business perspective of seeing each of the strategies differently. So I've got email marketing strategy, I have ads, I have social media. They all were like separate silos if you like, and they weren't connected. And they weren't using them all to create this bigger picture journey for the customer. And that is absolutely no shade on those [00:04:00] businesses. It's a really easy thing to slip into running your marketing from a business perspective rather than from a client perspective. Now, typically you have your funnels, so Imagine your upside down triangle, and right at the top you've got your cold leads pouring in. So whether that's Facebook ads, whether that's Instagram, however you're getting your leads, they're coming in at the top, and then you've got a lot of strategies sitting in the middle, email, marketing, social media, maybe podcast, you know, something to nurture them and warm them up. At the bottom, you kind of got them coming at the bottom. When they are making themselves known and they want to work with you, maybe they book a call or they sign up on your sales page, whatever it is. Now, this model can be quite tough because what I've realized is, is that once they go in the job, you lose sight of them basically until they come out the bottom. Think of it as like a solid black funnel rather than a see-through one where you can kind of see what's going on. So you only see what's coming in and going out. Now the way I've started to think about it and the way I'm working with clients now and what I've been testing over the last few months and how I've set up my business now I've rebranded, [00:05:00] is really flipping it on its side and thinking about it as a customer journey. So instead of having your funnel as like an upside down triangle, just turn it. To the left if you like. So you've got your like, big opening or like the left hand side, and this is where customers are coming in. So it's their customer journey starts there. Now. It's the same thing, you know, people come into your world. But the way I look at it is then how can we use all our marketing that we already have going but connect them up To give people a much more relevant experience, so giving people the right message at the right time for them. So it might be that they go onto social media, then we move them onto email and then onto the website and we add value in a different way. And basically what we're doing is moving people around are different platforms all the time, rather than keeping them quite separate. And by doing that intentionally, strategically, and putting in place some automations, you start to get a lot more visibility of where they are, their levels of engagement, and it becomes much more predictable and reliable. And if you do start to see business dropping off or there's an [00:06:00] issue, Or you need more client, you can actually then look back across the customer journey and see what's working and what's not. So what does this look like in reality? Cuz I get it, that's all really theoretical and that's really nice, but in reality, what does that actually look like? So I'm gonna talk you through some practical steps you can do to look at that journey because you do have a customer journey, even if you think you don't and see how connected it is and whether there's some small things you can change to make a difference or whether you wanna go all in and make all the changes. Because The beauty of it is it's pretty low maintenance. So if you want to develop a foundation for your business to grow, if you are looking at scaling, if you're looking at bringing new services into your business and you really want to make sure that you have this end-to-end customer journey nailed this is a great starting point, so the first step is to start by thinking about all the ways that someone could find you now. Our core principles at this stage are, how can they find you? When they find you is the next step they can take Clear and is the next step somewhere [00:07:00] you can track? And those are the three questions I want you to keep in your mind all the time now and going forward whenever you are adding a link to your bio, whenever you are adding a pinned post, whenever you are adding anything onto your social media or email or website, I want you to think about, is this trackable? Is this a clear next step? Is this gonna help me understand where someone is in their journey with me? So let's start with social media. And the key thing here is even the ones you don't use very much. Now lots of us have social media that we have set up and we don't necessarily use LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, whatever it is, right? If you probably have a presence on lots of those, but you probably have one or two main platforms that you use. I'd really encourage you to go to every single one of those social media platforms and have a look at your profile. Check the bio check where your links go, check what the recent visible pinned, or featured posts are. Even if you're not using that profile, it's somewhere where someone could come across you and we want to then bring them into your world [00:08:00] so that we know they're there. So in all of those platforms, you want to make sure a, the bio is the same across all of them, that any cover photos, promote something that you can track. So for example, let go to my Facebook group or my email opt-in. So any pinned or featured post where you're asking someone to take an action, we want that to go to your website or your email. So someone comes across one of these profiles, they know exactly what they need to do to come further into your world, and that might be to come over to onto your other social media platform. It might be your email list, it might be on your website. It needs to be something that you can then track and know that they're in your world. Okay? Next up, I want you to look at your website. It's surprisingly common for people's social media buttons not to work at the bottom of your website. So I just want you to check that because I've been on some pretty high profile websites where their Facebook link goes to the web developer's, Facebook, not their own. So definitely check that. So at the bottom or wherever your social links are on your website, just double check. It goes to your social media and there's not a broken link. Next up, do [00:09:00] you have a visible lead magnet for people to sign up to? This might sound really obvious, but if you just have a popup, you might think, tick, I've got that. However, someone's just gonna land on your website for the first time. Popup is gonna come up. Their likelihood is they're just gonna X off it. They don't know if they want your freebie yet or not. They're only literally just landing on your website. So either you have a popup for when people are going to leave the website or when they scroll a certain percentage down or they've been on your website a certain amount of time. And also you can also have the banner across the top. You can have it in the footer. So just making sure that The encouragement to get them onto your email list is there. If you have got multiple lead magnets, then I would just make sure they are dotted around on different pages, wherever they're relevant. Making sure you're just giving people as much opportunity as possible to get onto your email list. So when you've done your social media and your website and all roads essentially lead to your email list, your website, and your social media, that's when you know that when someone takes a next step, you are gonna be able to track them in your world. I don't want anyone to get too freaked out by [00:10:00] me. Keep talking about tracking. This is much more about creating an enjoyable journey for your customers by sending them like relevant, interesting information and that they will value and is useful for them than it is forcing them to do anything or that they don't want to do, or kind of being slightly stalkery. Really what we want to do is make sure that we understand how engaged they are and. And really what the best next thing for us to give them would be. So if we think about our welcome sequence, this is where the connectivity kind of comes into play. So when you're sending your welcome sequence, just have a look through the sequence and see where do you send people . Across those emails, you could give people the link to find out more information about something on your website, maybe like an extra value download that leads on from your freebie. If you've got a really well written about page, that can actually be quite a nice lead on from an intro email. Rather than having an email that says, come say hi on social, you could actually send them a link to an intro video on your social media. Or a video [00:11:00] that gives them extra value that leads on from the lead magnet they've just downloaded. Or even a video on some insight about how to work with you or some long form content. So have you got a podcast or blogs or YouTube, anything really that's gonna take them from just coming into your world and grabbing a freebie to, oh, okay. Like that's the next step on from this lead magnet. That would be really interesting. That's really valuable for me, like that's genuinely useful. And if you can send them to something that's got your video, that's even more powerful. What we really want to do is not be that name in an inbox. You're like, who is she? I have signed up for so many opt-ins over my time. I thought, oh, that's a really great opt-in. And then I start getting these emails from like this random name and I'm like, who on earth is that? And then I open it up and I'm like, oh yeah. Oh. Okay. Yeah, no, she's the one I got the opt-in from. I've developed no connection with them. I don't know who they are, I'm not engaged with what they do. The likelihood is I'll probably unsubscribe at some point. So what we really want to do is bring them into our world. You've got to remember that especially people that coming in from ads are [00:12:00] so cold, like freezing cold. These are not people who browse your Instagram, watched your videos, listened to you for an hour on a podcast. Particularly people who are coming in from ads, they know absolutely nothing about you. So by using your welcome sequence as a way to connect them to videos, long form content, extra value, next steps, it's really, really helpful for them to a, understand , who you are and what you offer, and whether they want to stay in your world or not. But also it gives them extra information that's valuable for them and likely is useful. The next thing is to set up segments in your email. Now you've probably already got segments, and actually it's really interesting because a lot of my e-comm clients are really, really good at this. So you might have segments for people who've added to cart. You might have segments for people who've purchased more than once. It can be quite obvious what those segments are. With service-based businesses, it can feel a little bit harder. Like, well, how am I gonna pick out who is interested and who's not? The first thing I could suggest is just setting up a simple segment that collects anyone who's [00:13:00] clicked on a link in your emails. Open rates are not reliable for various reasons I'm not gonna go into. Now, they might give you a rough guide as to how many people are opening your emails. But click rates are much more reliable and people actually clicking on links in your website are the ones who are engaged, who want more, especially if you're putting strategic links in, are gonna give them extra value and are gonna target the people that actually want the service that you offer. So I definitely set up a segment that pulls together all the people who've clicked on your links. Now if you want to go to the next level, you could also set up a segment of people who click on your sales link across any of your emails. So if you put your sales page and any of your ongoing emails in the welcome sequence, wherever it is, you really want to know who are those people that are clicking on your sales page, because at some point, What you might want to do if they click on it a certain amount of times or over certain, like over three months or something like that, you might want to set up a little sequence or email them, love bomb them. Maybe with like an extra value. You could offer a call or something that's not on [00:14:00] your website. Exclusive to them, like these are people who are going on your sales page. They're interested, they're engaged, they're clicking on your emails. How can you nudge them over the line? How can you get them to book a call? This is that visibility of the difference between people who have joined your email list. If you think of them as quite early on in the customer journey versus the people who have watched a video, downloaded your extra info, downloaded your video, that's the next step from your lead magnet, seen your sales page, gone on your Instagram and watched your welcome video, maybe listened to a podcast episode. If you think of each of those different things that you've nudged them to do, if someone is taking each of those steps, they're moving along the customer journey. Really, if you have all that information and you know what they're doing, that really shows you how many people you've got that are moving along towards potentially working with you. Not all of those people will convert. Absolutely. However you will be able to see what's moving people along, what sort of interest to people and of the people that end up working with you. What did they do? How many touch points did you have to have with them before they booked a call? What was [00:15:00] it that they watched or engaged with that really nudged them to make that call gives you so much information about your future strategy as well as your current strategy. And potentially as well, if you wanted to, if you knew these people who are like further along in that customer journey, you could engage with them on Instagram. You could offer opportunities for them to start conversations in your stories, your posts, have a close friends group on Instagram stories. There's loads and loads of ways you can stay part of their world and make sure that they keep seeing you and understanding what you do. So now I'm gonna talk a little bit about Facebook ads and how they kind of come into it. Most of what I've talked about up until this point is organic. And you could have it totally organically. So you wouldn't necessarily have to have lead ads running. You could have people organically coming into your world, joining your email list, going on your website, going on your social media and then offering them different opportunities to go to different places. See you in different ways. Now, the power of ads, is that a, you're gonna have a lot more people going through that if you're using lead ads to get people into that customer journey. [00:16:00] So that's the first thing. It's just sheer numbers. The second is that you can run other types of campaigns other than just to get leads. So you can have what I call an always on campaign and also retargeting campaign. So, Both of them can be really, really powerful. So an always on campaign is a combination of ads that don't necessarily ask people to do anything, but really keeps you front of mind. And often it's posts that you've already done that are already on your social media. So it could be video testimonials from clients, it could be social proof, like a written testimonial or some results you've got for clients, like a client case study post. It could be a value post, like seven ways to do this, or Things you need to think about. I've could be a call to action, like, I've written this blog, or I've got a new podcast. There are so many things that you could do essentially what you do is set these posts up in a campaign on Facebook and you only send them out to people who are in your world already. So, whereas with lead Ads, we are trying to find new people all the time. With these ones, what we're actually doing is showing them different things when [00:17:00] they're already in our world. So they might have engaged with us on social media, joined our email list, been on our website, and what we are doing is just. Putting ourselves back in front of them, we are offering them an opportunity to go onto our website. We are giving them more value. We are showing them the kind of results we can get for our clients. And you can have settings that they're not seeing these loads and getting bombarded by them, but it's a much more reliable and strategic way of them seeing your content. Rather than just hoping that the algorithm shows them your organic social media. And then finally there's the retargeting. Now, you do have to have enough people for this. So it's either something that you would set up and over time you'd build up the pots until you were ready to start it. Or if you were getting a lot of people through your funnel, you could start quite quickly. Essentially this is a campaign that targets people that have shown quite high intent. So they're quite far along in the customer journey now. They might have been on your sales page. Listened to podcasts or any kind of long form content, engaged quite a lot on your email list. Saved your social media posts. So these are people who are further [00:18:00] along in your customer journey, and a much more likely to want to understand what you're selling, you know, be able to book a call with you to get some exclusive access to something that you're offering a new service, something like that. And that really essentially is the premise of the whole thing is it's giving people what they want at the right time. If someone joins your email list from ads and you serve them straight away, a book, a call with me, a direct sales post. In some cases that will work, people will be ready. They'll be looking for your service. They'll find you love you and book. For other people, it's going to take a lot more nurturing, a lot more engagement, understanding what you do, becoming familiar with you, how you work your business, the type of clients you work with, the results you get. And really this journey is just about creating the opportunity for them whilst keeping visibility of who's kind of who's moving along that journey. Making sure that people don't get stuck right at the beginning of it, because that's really what I see at the moment is that people come on to the email list, they get sent a welcome sequence and then they get a weekly email and they're never really moving on. Through that journey, they [00:19:00] sort of get stuck just reading weekly emails. Maybe they see your social media, but they never really get to that point where they are engaging and know you and understand because we're not helping them move along. I talk quite a lot to my clients about how this should be a joyful journey for your customer, because it is serving them the right information. At the right time at the right pace for them, like the quicker they interact with all your staff, the quicker they're going to get to the sales messages. But also for you as well, it should give you much more predictable clients coming through that journey. And it's going to give you more data so you can unpick what's working and what's not. And then, because most of this is automated. You can use your time to create connection. You know, create videos for clients who are moving through that journey, surprise and delight, you know, love, bomb them, like do little small, extra things that really show your personality, which you're going to have the time to do because everything else is kind of running in the background. So if this was helpful and you want a little bit more detail on how you can implement it, more examples. And they'd break down of all the different things you can do to create [00:20:00] this journey, as well as practical tips on implementing it. I have a very special resource for you. If you click the link in the show notes, you'll get my brand new audit tool. So I'm not trying to think of a snappy title for it. So next week you might have a snappy title for it this week, I think I'm just going to call it the customer journey audit. It's going to take you about 15 to 20 minutes to do the audit. It's going to go through your, all your lead gen, your nurture processes and your conversion processes. And it's going to allow you to have a look at what you've got a look at where those leaks are like, where are you not connecting up your different parts of your journey? And then you can create a really clear action list from there. Once you've done that. If you are totally on board with this and think this is exactly what I need in my life, but you're going to need some help to make it happen. I would love to chat to you. There's a link in the show notes that you can click through to have a look at my services page on the website. Which we'll show you how I work with clients to bring this to life for them. And then I'd love it. If you'd get in touch to talk about making it reality for you. I do have relatively low availability [00:21:00] over the summer. And if this is something that you would quite like in place for September, because we all know it ramps up again in September. Then make sure you get in touch ASAP. I hope you've enjoyed this episode and found it useful as always calm and have a chat with me on Instagram. Let me know your biggest takeaways or what you found useful. And I will see you next week. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes every Tuesday when they're released. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to rate or leave a review wherever you are listening to it. It only takes a few seconds, but it really does make a massive difference to new people finding me. Thank you again for joining me, Sophie, in this episode of Lionheart Marketing. See you next time.